This application generally relates to the field of vehicular rollover mitigation systems and, more particularly, towards systems that mitigate a soft-tripped vehicular rollover through a systematic and electronic control of certain in-vehicle systems.
Vehicular rollovers have been observed in motor sports, racing events, off-road driving, or aggressive on-road driving. Rollover protection and mitigation systems have thus been developed and applied over time to protect vehicles and its occupants from injuries. Some protection systems are purely structural, while other solutions provide for electronically controlled rollover prevention measures. More so, such rollover protection systems have been applied in commercial vehicles as well.
When a vehicle slides sideways to strike an immovable obstacle, such as a curb or a stationary vehicle, the tires and/or the vehicle body undergoes a very high impact force from the lateral direction. Such lateral impact forces could cause the vehicle to rollover and the corresponding rollovers are called hard tripped rollovers. On the other hand, rollovers occurring without the involvement of high lateral impact forces, or with small lateral tripping forces, result in soft-tripped rollovers. Soft-tripped rollovers could happen when the vehicle slides sideways digging its tires into soft soil, when one side of the vehicle rides up on an object, or when one side of the vehicle rides down to a drop-off. Other rollovers resulting from vehicle imbalance caused while negotiating a turn, or while steering hard in a direction etc., may be classified as untripped rollovers. In conventional vehicles, electronic control systems, such as roll stability controls, are observed to be effective in mitigating untripped rollovers. The majority of rollovers, however, are tripped rollovers (including both hard and soft-tripped rollovers), and in such conventional systems, tripped rollovers limit the functionality of the roll stability control systems. More particularly, roll stability control systems function to reduce a risk of rollover caused by a driver's aggressive steering maneuver by braking heavily on certain wheel/wheels when a tilt of the body, beyond a predetermined threshold, is sensed together with a measured steering aggression. Such roll stability control systems have limited effectiveness in mitigating tripped rollovers that are not necessarily dependent on the driver's steering aggression.
While undertaking a maneuver, some systems alert a vehicle driver of the possibility of a rollover. Such systems however, depend on the driver's ability to control and stabilize the vehicle, before a rollover occurs. In such cases, the likelihood of a rollover and its consequences relies on the driver's efforts and the driver's ability to act timely, which may vary over time. Further, driver inaction due to factors such as fatigue, distraction or even panic may compromise the effectiveness of such rollover alerting mechanisms.
It would thus be desirable to have a vehicular rollover mitigation system that assists the driver in undertaking any responsive measures upon a rollover and in maintaining complete attention on the track ahead.